New publications

Thanks to Bonnie for putting Xu Zhimo in the vision of the world. He may not be the greatest modern Chinese poet (depending who you talk to), but certainly one that can be globally understood and accepted.

List members who welcomed last year’s two items about Xu Zhimo as a world poet (November 18 & 19, 2017) will be pleased to hear about the anthology Into English, edited by Martha Collins and Kevin Prufer (Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, 2017), which includes Xu Zhimo as one of twenty-five world poets whose work in translation is featured. Contributors were asked to select a poem that has been translated into English at least three times and to comment on these translations. I chose Xu Zhimo and his “Zai bie Kangqiao” [A Second Farewell to Cambridge], probably the best known poem in modern Chinese, and compared translations by Kai-yu Hsu, Michelle Yeh and Hugh Grigg. I’ve never translated any of Xu Zhimo’s poems for publication but have enjoyed reading and teaching them for many years. This anthology is a tribute to the lasting value of poets and poetry around the world and an acknowledgement of the deep pleasure to be gained by translating and reading translations of their works.

Bonnie S. McDougall FAHA
Honorary Associate, School of Languages and Cultures,
University of Sydney A18;
Professor Emeritus of Chinese, The University of Edinburghwww.bonniesmcdougall.com

Two new pieces by Wang Hui of possible interest to list members were recently published in English online. These translations, which I did with fellow Ph.D. student Benjamin Kindler, cover a wide range of topics in Chinese revolutionary and cultural history.

The first is actually an interview between Wang and the curators of the Guggenheim exhibition “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World”. It can be downloaded here:

The second piece is a lengthy article printed in the special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly (vol. 116 issue 4), dedicated to the Soviet Centenary. The issue was published last October, but just became available online. Please find the article abstract below: Continue reading →

I am editing a Chinese book featuring English essays on XIE Jin (1923-2008) and his films to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Xie’s passing. Does anyone have a published English article on XIE that can be translated into Chinese? Please let me know. This book is tentatively titled Xie Jin and His Legacy to the World: A Collection of Essays. If interested, please contact me at shaoyis@gmail.com. Thank you very much.

JMLC releases its 14.2–15.1 special issue “Chinese Poetry and Translation: Moving the Goalposts”

Guest-edited by Maghiel van Crevel, this special issue of the Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese (JMLC) comes out of a June 2017 workshop at Lingnan University. Rather than from real and imagined problems of (Chinese)-poetry-and-translation, the authors of this issue work from its potential: for rocking the boat rather than providing safe passage, for moving the goalposts and getting away with it, for empowering the translator to choose, time and again, which rule s/he wants to break, and unleashing whatever it is that happens next. While translation—interlingual and otherwise—is a central feature of the study of Chinese literature as practiced in an international community, it nevertheless doesn’t always get the attention it deserves, and we are happy to help address this. The papes conjoin theoretical contributions with in-depth reflection generated from inside processes and results of translation and its infrastructure. The abstracts can be viewed at http://commons.ln.edu.hk/jmlc/.

6 Introduction, by Dai Jinhua
8 Writing as a Way of Life: Nomination of Wang Anyi for the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, by Dai Jinhua
10 “Coming to Oklahoma”: In Acceptance of the 2017 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, by Wang Anyi
12 Wang Anyi: The Storyteller as Thinker, by Wang Ban
14 Seven Short Conversations with Wang Anyi, Dai Jinhua, and Wang Ban, by Ping Zhu
22 The Emergence of a Writer, the Evolution of a Literary Scene: In Conversation with Wang Anyi, by Michael Berry
29 The White Horse in the Longtang, by Wang Anyi
35 Mothers and Daughters: Orphanage as Method, by Carlos Rojas
43 From Nostalgia to Reflection: An Exploration of The Song of Everlasting Sorrow by Wang Anyi, by Elena Martin-Enebral
52 Wang Anyi, Taiwan, and the World: The 1983 International Writing Program and Biblical Allusions in Utopian Verses, by Po-hsi Chen Continue reading →

MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Darrell William Davis’s review of Hollywood Made in China (University of California Press, 2017), by Aynne Kokas. The review appears below, but is best read online at: http://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/ddavis/. My thanks to Jason McGrath, MCLC media studies book review editor, for ushering the review to publication.

Hollywood Made in China is an elegant account of Hollywood’s evolving engagements in China’s commercial film environment. In six concise chapters, Aynne Kokas details the myriad flows of policy, investment, deployment, and rewards of Sino-US media co-productions. Her aim is mostly large-scale entertainment schemes, including contemporary blockbusters, theme parks, and studio co-ventures. Because China is now becoming the world’s largest film market, Hollywood is courting Chinese executives and regulators, the better to ensure access to viewers and returns for American pictures. The objective is market access, in return for which Hollywood players are willing to cede control, a tradeoff the author calls “transformative” (33). This is a transaction not available to Silicon Valley (e.g., Google, Facebook, Netflix), and despite frustrations of piracy and capricious regulations, Hollywood may well count itself fortunate. In any case, Kokas demonstrates that the Sino-US co-production enterprise is a work in progress, always in a state of renegotiation and revision, as she aptly puts it: “The Hollywood dream factory and the Chinese Dream work together, while mired in a state of perpetual negotiation” (20). A combination of Hollywood “thirst” for ever-larger markets (old) and China’s “cultural trade deficit” (new) brings potential synergies and symbiosis (2-3). It also brings evolving forms of contention and conflict (13). With every new co-production, new standards and practices appear in the playbook. Aynne Kokas makes a strong case for the “interaction and variability” (8), the unpredictability inherent in this volatile relation. Continue reading →

On behalf of Meng Lang, I would like to announce that his collection of poetry about Tiananmen is now available in Italian.

SULL’EDUCAZIONE, Un diario poetico su Tian’anmen 1989 is translated by Claudia Pozzana of the University of Bologna and Alessandro Russo. This follows the publication of the bilingual edition, Views on Education: Twenty-five Poems (教育詩篇 二十五首), which was translated by Denis Mair. More information on Sull’educazione is available from the publisher, Damocle Edizioni:https://edizionidamocle.wordpress.com

MCLC Resource Center is most pleased to announce publication of “Walk on the Wild Side: Snapshots of the Chinese Poetry Scene,” by Maghiel van Crevel. With its 143 mini-chapters and lavish illustrations, this is the longest and most ambitious piece we’ve published to date in our online publication series. Though written in a non-academic style that makes it accessible to a general readership, it is filled with details of interest to academic specialists in contemporary Chinese poetry. The essay can be read online at:

I am glad to announce the publication of the latest issue of Made in China, the open access quarterly on Chinese labour and civil society supported by the Australian Centre on China in the World, the Australian National University. You can download the pdf for free and subscribe at this link: http://www.chinoiresie.info/made-in-china-quarterly/. Below you can find the editorial of the new issue:

Balancing Acts: Precarious Labour in Contemporary China

On 19 November, a fire broke out in a popular housing block inhabited mostly by migrant workers in Beijing’s Daxing district, killing nineteen. Citing the need to ensure safety, in a matter of days the local authorities forced tens of thousands of ‘low-end people’ (diduan renkou) to abandon their dwellings in the suburbs of the Chinese capital, showing absolutely no regard for their livelihoods. Families who had moved from all over China—and had, in some cases, lived in Beijing for years—were effectively thrown out on the street and left to their own fate in the freezing northern winter. In just a few days they lost everything, a cruel reminder of the precarity inherent to the life of the Chinese migrant. Continue reading →

We are pleased to announce publication of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, volume 29, number 2 (Fall 2017). Find a table of contents for the issue below, along with links to abstracts. For those of you who are subscribers, you should be receiving your copy in the next couple of weeks. For those of you who would like to subscribe or to purchase single copies of this issue, please contact my (new) assistant Mario De Grandis (mclc@osu.edu). We greatly appreciate the support you show for MCLC through your subscriptions. Back issues of MCLC, with a two-year lag, are available through JSTOR. Seeing as it is the season of giving, if anyone is in a giving mood, please consider donating to MCLC. Enjoy the new issue.

Post navigation

Archived Posts

Social Media Links

If you have trouble accessing this page and need to request an alternate format, contact u@osu.edu

The content of this site is published by the site owner(s) and is not a statement of advice, opinion, or information pertaining to The Ohio State University. Neither text, nor links to other websites, is reviewed or endorsed by The Ohio State University.